top of page

Hybrid microfluidics

for single-cell studies 

Fatemeh Ahmadi, Kenza Samlali, Philippe Vo

We have developed an integrated droplet-digital microfluidic (ID2M’) system in which with the addition of electrodes under the microchannels, we have been able to create droplets on-demand, tune their volumes on-demand, and merge and mix several droplets to produce a dilution series. Moreover, this device can trap and incubate droplets for 24 h that can consequently be sorted and analyzed in multiple n-ary channels (as opposed to typical binary channels). The ID2M platform has been validated as a robust on-demand screening system by sorting fluorescein droplets of different concentration with an efficiency of ∼96%. The utility of the new system is further demonstrated by culturing and sorting tolerant yeast mutants and wild-type yeast cells in ionic liquid based on their growth profiles. This new platform for both droplet and digital microfluidics has the potential to be used for screening different conditions on-chip and for applications like directed evolution.

bottom of page